The Jose VilsonIt's not about a salary; it's all about reality.2015-03-02T01:00:02+00:00hourly1http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheJoseVilson?format=skinhttp://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gifTheJoseVilsonhttps://feedburner.google.comThere Is No “How To” For Teacher LeadershipJose Vilson2015-03-01T17:00:02-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14470<p>Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the New Teacher Center conference in San Francisco, CA to discuss teacher leadership. It felt like forever since I used the words &#8220;teacher leader&#8221; to describe myself, but people have no idea what to do with me since I am in the classroom with a full program and am mentoring and speaking out about different ideas in teaching. Thus, teacher leader. Most ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/there-is-no-how-to-for-teacher-leadership/">There Is No &#8220;How To&#8221; For Teacher Leadership</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the New Teacher Center conference in San Francisco, CA to discuss teacher leadership. It felt like forever since I used the words &#8220;teacher leader&#8221; to describe myself, but people have no idea what to do with me since I am in the classroom with a full program and am mentoring and speaking out about different ideas in teaching. Thus, teacher leader.</p>
<p>Most of my evaluations for my teacher leadership workshop were sterling, surprising because I had to follow folks like Dr. Baruti Kafele, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, and Elena Aguilar, all of whom have solid reputations on the Left Coast in their own right. It must have been the GIFs, but it could also have been the time I left for folks to think through and develop their own plans for teacher leadership within their tables. Yet, two or three folks brought my rating down on one of the dimensions for not actually talking about how-to become a teacher leader.</p>
<p>Believe it or not, I wasn&#8217;t mad. By eliciting reflection questions for everyone, and giving folks time to call out some of the pressing issues with teacher leadership (like when the rest of the staff doesn&#8217;t believe in that teacher leader), I thought I had done better than 95% of other workshops I had been a part of. Yet, I forgot to tell people exactly <em>how to</em> do it.</p>
<p>Now that I think about it, I don&#8217;t have a step-by-step guide for becoming a teacher leader, <em>either</em>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s difficult. Most schools develop teacher leadership through content area, like the head of a department or someone who takes the minutes in a grade-level meeting. Some schools might have one or two people who teach part-time and work on curriculum or technology, but those tend to be more progressive than most districts&#8217; standards.</p>
<p>Most people only go to teacher leader groups when they&#8217;ve already felt that quality in them or they don&#8217;t feel like they have a choice but to lead without leaving the classroom.</p>
<p>Plus, teacher leadership, like anything, depends on the school the teacher is in. Therefore, if the school isn&#8217;t compatible with the latest teacher leadership trends, then teacher leadership won&#8217;t work. How that environment is built will determine what the environment needs, and what that environment needs determines how and how well the teacher leads.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the long and short of it. With so many blueprints out there, can there only be one?</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/jjwp05U2HsY" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/there-is-no-how-to-for-teacher-leadership/feed/0http://thejosevilson.com/there-is-no-how-to-for-teacher-leadership/What Works For My KidsJose Vilson2015-02-26T16:57:58-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14450<p>The New York Times&#8217; Anna North recently asked me if I was a believer in learning styles, and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;No.&#8221; That&#8217;s not my fault, really. As a younger teacher, many of the veteran teachers told me the long list of initiatives that they&#8217;d seen come and go in education research, where &#8220;education research&#8221; is a pejorative, not a compliment. Multiple intelligences. Learning styles. Workshop model. Differentiation. The new math ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/what-works-for-my-kids/">What Works For My Kids</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>The New York Times&#8217; Anna North recently asked me if I was a believer <a href="http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/are-learning-styles-a-symptom-of-educations-ills/?_r=1">in learning styles</a>, and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;No.&#8221; That&#8217;s not my fault, really. As a younger teacher, many of the veteran teachers told me the long list of initiatives that they&#8217;d seen come and go in education research, where &#8220;education research&#8221; is a pejorative, not a compliment. Multiple intelligences. Learning styles. Workshop model. Differentiation. The new math / everyday math. Now? Systems in place. Common Core. Data-driven instruction.</p>
<p>Every time an initiative comes out, we&#8217;re subjected to another professional development session where the person in front of us, administrator or book-hustler, stands in front of us, lauding the latest and greatest. We shift in our seats, prepared to get another set of gobbledygook splayed across our already bloodshot eyes. PowerPoint presentations with tiny letters and business clip art help make convincing arguments for why this specific pedagogical trick will work for our students this time for real, for real. Unconvinced of its efficacy, teachers hope this goes away, and, when it doesn&#8217;t the first few times, start to implement the language without trying it to fidelity.</p>
<p>Here, it&#8217;s easy to blame educators for not having the courage to try something that a random stranger came in with, akin to salesmen trying to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZBPoRwog00">develop a monorail in small towns</a>. But teachers with experiences like this might not be so easily swayed, thus the resistance to anything new. Some might call it part of the anti-intellectual movement, but I believe it&#8217;s just a general resistance to the oscillating quality in professional development and the haphazard policies our districts espouse. Like, how many of these &#8220;movements&#8221; go by the wayside when a politician moves, foundation money dries up, or another non-profit comes up with a bigger and even better idea that&#8217;s <em>totally</em> researched-based?</p>
<p>You&#8217;d be right to say that, because policymakers don&#8217;t actually take education research seriously, it&#8217;s harder for us to take education research on the whole seriously (except those who confirm our biases), the education research that actually <em>might</em> make our students learn better gets lost in the shuffle. The words &#8220;sustainability,&#8221; &#8220;quality,&#8221; and &#8220;systems&#8221; come up so often in edu-jargon, but many education firms are in the business of moving statistics for their specific bias, and not for the benefit of schools writ large.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a scary prospect for an educator who&#8217;s just trying to make sense of it all. Of course, the clash between researchers and <a href="http://www.educationrethink.com/2012/09/i-dont-believe-in-research.html">practitioners is nothing new</a>, but, like most of these boondoggles, it&#8217;s worth re-examining so we can get to some real work. The more years I accumulate in this profession, the more techniques I find useful from colleagues who aren&#8217;t in the education research field. If we want to see real movement on education-related research, maybe researchers and practitioners should sit at the same tables.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s pedagogy over everything. How do we have better conversations on what works?</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/what-works-for-my-kids/">What Works For My Kids</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/BmEd5fc4T90" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/what-works-for-my-kids/feed/10http://thejosevilson.com/what-works-for-my-kids/Why We Need Black History Month In The First PlaceJose Vilson2015-02-22T15:36:08-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14447<p>Recently, PBS Newshour asked for my thoughts on Black History Month. After noticing that even some people of color railed against the idea of such a month, I decided to write a primer on why we needed them and why this matters for our students, all of them: I wanted to give the students a 10-minute lecture on the fact that groups used to lynch people of color for public ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/why-we-need-black-history-month-in-the-first-place/">Why We Need Black History Month In The First Place</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>Recently, PBS Newshour asked for my thoughts on Black History Month. After noticing that even some people of color railed against the idea of such a month, I decided to write a primer on <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/black-history-month-helping-students-understand-role-history/">why we needed them and why this matters for our students</a>, all of them:</p>
<blockquote><p>I wanted to give the students a 10-minute lecture on the fact that groups used to lynch people of color for public display, that Emmett Till was around their age when he was savagely beaten and killed for supposedly flirting with a white women, that at their age, I saw Rodney King get beaten on video for trivial matters, and that Amadou Diallo, the man who police officers shot at 41 times after mistaking a wallet for a gun, worked in a grocery store I frequented in high school.</p>
<p>Instead, I said that I too knew how they felt, and I too saw what they saw, and I too wanted justice for the murders of young men and women of color. I also mentioned how their feelings might be further complicated by having relatives in the police and armed forces. I don’t believe they are bad people, but, as with anything, sometimes the jobs we do puts us at odds with the people we want to be. That includes teachers. The conversation showed me why highlighting their voices mattered more than my own.</p></blockquote>
<p>Read more here. Share. Comment. Thanks!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/activist-photographers-who-fought-for-civil-rights/">photo c/o</a></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/why-we-need-black-history-month-in-the-first-place/">Why We Need Black History Month In The First Place</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/TwugPjWIylo" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/why-we-need-black-history-month-in-the-first-place/feed/1http://thejosevilson.com/why-we-need-black-history-month-in-the-first-place/White Administrators’ GuiltJose Vilson2015-02-17T19:05:21-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14434<p>&#8220;This race discussion doesn&#8217;t apply to me.&#8221; Whenever we say that racism isn&#8217;t just discrimination of one set of people towards another, but a systemic set of power structures that benefits one (white) group over another. This goes double for principals and assistant principals because, when your standing already endows you with more power than others in the building, your responsibility towards being cultural competent is doubled as well. We ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/white-administrators-guilt/">White Administrators&#8217; Guilt</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p><em>&#8220;This race discussion doesn&#8217;t apply to me.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>Whenever we say that racism isn&#8217;t just discrimination of one set of people towards another, but a systemic set of power structures that benefits one (white) group over another. This goes double for principals and assistant principals because, when your standing already endows you with more power than others in the building, your responsibility towards being cultural competent is doubled as well.</p>
<p>We have racist administrators in our schools, some overtly and some covertly. Our school system has yet to assess for racism because education reform assumes that &#8220;high expectations&#8221; shows up in the form of raising test scores, a bullshit shortcut instead of addressing some of the racist attitudes espoused by some of the highest-ranking adults running our school buildings across the country. It&#8217;s easier, mind you, to get rid <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/va-students-slam-assistant-principal-racist-tweet-article-1.2015923">of a principal for racist tweets</a> or <a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/07/08/teachers-african-american-faculty-was-targeted-for-firing-at-queens-school/">calling staff members gorillas</a>, but implicit bias shows up in ways that aren&#8217;t so obvious.</p>
<p>Like, what if an administrator always finds a way to write up and suspend the children of color in their building? What if they talk down to Spanish-speaking parents and treat them as bothersome ignoramuses? What if the administrator looks at the white teachers in the building as the only way the school will reform and points at the veteran teachers, typically of color, as part of the problem? What if they tout their degrees to the kids not as a source of inspiration, but as a way of saying &#8220;You&#8217;ll never get there and you don&#8217;t deserve to be in my midst?&#8221; What if they look at the students and assume the father isn&#8217;t present or the mother doesn&#8217;t care? What if, when visitors come, the administrator only visits classrooms where the students speak the King&#8217;s English and puts all the kids who speak only Chinese in the basement? What if they refuse to say the students&#8217; names right, make fun of them for not being called &#8220;Jim&#8221; or &#8220;Sarah,&#8221; and yell at them when the students when they&#8217;re using their own language amongst their friends? What if they only sit next to other white administrators and assume the Latino administrator probably got the job at a struggling school and because she has connections with the superintendent?</p>
<p>What if <em>your</em> administrator is racist?</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s only one level. What if the administrator <a href="http://thejosevilson.com/educators-say-darndest-things-kids-color/">sees a staff member doing something racist</a> and says nothing about it? Are they complicit and, if so, doesn&#8217;t that almost make them racist by association? If they see a student suddenly dip in grades in only one specific class and that child just happens to be the only student of color there, shouldn&#8217;t that pique an administrators&#8217; curiosity? What if the teacher has the highest test scores in the building, but genuinely treats the students as &#8220;those&#8221; and &#8220;these&#8221; constantly?</p>
<p>Is racism in schools just a manifestation of unfounded anger or does it happen when we stand by and let folks do it, too?</p>
<p>From my purview, white administrators&#8217; guilt, on the surface, suggests that they hold low expectations for the students in front of them. They use the dialogue about poverty and outside influences on student achievement as a crutch for why students can&#8217;t learn rather than an understanding that they must try hardest <em>because</em>, <em>in spite, </em>and <em>even so</em>. On a deeper level, though, white administrators&#8217; guilt is the idea that the people of color in front of you are less than human, unworthy of their pristine, yet unalienable education. That idea manifests in bigger issues like high suspension rates and zero tolerance policies and more subtle ideas like teaching students how to clean up their accents and only acknowledging American holidays.</p>
<p>But please: don&#8217;t point to Martin Luther King Jr. posters hanging in their offices and think that&#8217;s enough to get a pass. Plenty of young men and women of color hang in various ways in these schools, often at the principal&#8217;s behest.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/5w6Ei3OFl3U" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/white-administrators-guilt/feed/21http://thejosevilson.com/white-administrators-guilt/Rescinding My Invite to Governor Andrew CuomoJose Vilson2015-02-11T17:34:54-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14428<p>First off, Governor Andrew Cuomo is never getting an invitation to my classroom nor would I want him anywhere near my students. The most likely scenario is that he stops in for 10 minutes, listens to me do some math, stares at me coldly with the kids whispering &#8220;Who is this guy?&#8221; to each other, smirking with an &#8220;I told you that I&#8217;d drop by&#8221; look. Then, he&#8217;d ask me ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/rescinding-invite-governor-andrew-cuomo/">Rescinding My Invite to Governor Andrew Cuomo</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>First off, Governor Andrew Cuomo is never getting an invitation to my classroom nor would I want him anywhere near my students.</p>
<p>The most likely scenario is that he stops in for 10 minutes, listens to me do some math, stares at me coldly with the kids whispering &#8220;Who is this guy?&#8221; to each other, smirking with an &#8220;I told you that I&#8217;d drop by&#8221; look. Then, he&#8217;d ask me for time and I&#8217;d shake my head and his people would look at me like, &#8220;Come on &#8230;&#8221; and I&#8217;d begrudge it and say, &#8220;Make it quick,&#8221; and then he&#8217;d make a bold proclamation about the good work we (!) are doing to improve my students&#8217; test scores and I&#8217;d snicker loud and roll my eyes and then he&#8217;d strut out of my classroom the way some guy in the suit who drops an explosive dump in the bathroom does. I&#8217;d gag shortly thereafter, wash my hands, and hope I never remember that day happening to me.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not backing that.</p>
<p>Cuomo doesn&#8217;t seem at all swayed by the faces and names of students, educators, and parents doing hard work in arduous conditions, but will sweep whole commissions under a rug for friends with nice ties and good ties to him. He already invades our homes with his faux-ratory every morning, pretending that his solution for public schools will serve &#8220;every child&#8221; even though his calls for equity never include any tax restructuring methods or fulfilling school funding mandates. To wit, another commercial that plays alongside his education speech excerpt features his StartUpNYC program that offers an ingratiating incentive for companies to come to the state that include no business, corporate, sales, property, state, or local taxes for ten full years.</p>
<p>How he purposefully neglects funding in favor of his corporate friends doesn&#8217;t stun me in the least. How his finger can contort so the index faces teachers befuddles me to no end.</p>
<p>He&#8217;s become so predictable, too. How is it possible that he might want to walk into my classroom, listen to the discussions, take in some of the non-Common Core aligned banter, watch students produce math work, and think exactly half my job is to prepare students for a six-hour exam? If ramping up the testing accountability measure to 50% is a means of doubling the percentage of ineffective teachers (<a href="https://twitter.com/TheJLV/status/557991055232991232">after his own bill didn&#8217;t fire enough teachers to his liking</a>), where, pray tell, will he find educators that would want to fill the 10% &#8211; 20% of staff he&#8217;d like to fire? (Also, how does he make a political party for women without holding into account that most teachers, by a grand majority, are women?) How does testing my students <em>more</em> legitimize the students&#8217; learning when you&#8217;re reducing our jobs to test preppers? How does he think driving public funds for private entities is the same as equity, as if the floundering donations of a select few combined with paltry public education funds is equivalent to a robust and reliable funding source that gives all schools equitable resources? If you&#8217;re not about improving working conditions for <em>every child</em>, then how do you think your corporatist ideas for school reform will make equity possible?</p>
<p>I doubt it.</p>
<p>So please, don&#8217;t visit my classroom. My door has now been open, sometimes reluctantly, to adults of many backgrounds, some well-intentioned and some not-so-well-intentioned. In the time I&#8217;ve spent harboring these visitors peering through me and my students like my classroom was a fish tank, I&#8217;ve learned that the most powerful visitors rarely came to support our efforts. Save for one or two superintendents, they came to find fault with nary a step for improvement. It might astonish Cuomo to know that teachers crave timely, informed, and powerful critique on technique and pedagogy, and that some of our best strategies for student learning don&#8217;t often coincide with student achievement. There&#8217;s certainly lots of discussion to have about teaching quality and accountability, but slapping teachers around for the public to watch doesn&#8217;t help anyone, much less public schools.</p>
<p>So it shouldn&#8217;t shock him when he comes knocking, and I turn my back foot to the door, pushing forcefully as I get into my unit on functions.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/rescinding-invite-governor-andrew-cuomo/">Rescinding My Invite to Governor Andrew Cuomo</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/ew8pBCw95Ec" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/rescinding-invite-governor-andrew-cuomo/feed/5http://thejosevilson.com/rescinding-invite-governor-andrew-cuomo/A System of Ninety EquationsJose Vilson2015-02-08T18:03:13-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14426<p>I barely know what week I&#8217;m in right now. We just finished the second marking period and we&#8217;re just starting to get into systems of equations. I went through a few moments of &#8220;I can&#8217;t believe this is what they turned in&#8221; to &#8220;Yes, exactly, this this this!&#8221; and everything in between. I&#8217;ve known loneliness intimately in school, embraced it, and hoped it meant my voice meant more and not ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/system-ninety-equations/">A System of Ninety Equations</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>I barely know what week I&#8217;m in right now. We just finished the second marking period and we&#8217;re just starting to get into systems of equations. I went through a few moments of &#8220;I can&#8217;t believe this is what they turned in&#8221; to &#8220;Yes, exactly, this this this!&#8221; and everything in between. I&#8217;ve known loneliness intimately in school, embraced it, and hoped it meant my voice meant more and not less. I went from goatee to moustache to beard back to moustache, and shed as much hair as I&#8217;ve shed frustration in the last month.</p>
<p>Linear relationships would be so much easier if children learned this way, too.</p>
<p>I&#8217;d determine the pattern and hope they could progress just as consistently as the tables we&#8217;ve developed. They wouldn&#8217;t have to go through the same point of origin, but they&#8217;d at least grow continually, at a consistent pace, with a discernible slope. But they don&#8217;t. Students can keep coming to class and not keep learning. Or not. Students can keep having their materials ready for class. Or not. Students can keep doing well on my quizzes, homework assignments, and participation. Or not.</p>
<p>In other words, I&#8217;m in a perpetual search for the solution to 90 separate graphs, realistically un-graphable. Let&#8217;s see what the next two quarters of the year look like.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/system-ninety-equations/">A System of Ninety Equations</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/IL2pmvJWEw8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/system-ninety-equations/feed/5http://thejosevilson.com/system-ninety-equations/Exclusive: The Classroom and the Precinct, Accurately [The Enemy]Jose Vilson2015-02-01T12:47:22-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14423<p>My people, I recently wrote an article for the upstart mag The Enemy, expounding on my thoughts about the relationships between teachers and the police, pulling together Mobb Deep, Frank Serpico, and others for a piece that was / is absolutely necessary. Here&#8217;s a glimpse: To the eyes of the American public, it might seem like none of these are connected, but, to many people of color, the school-to-prison pipeline ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/exclusive-classroom-precinct-accurately-enemy/">Exclusive: The Classroom and the Precinct, Accurately [The Enemy]</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>My people,</p>
<p>I <a href="http://theenemyreader.org/classroom-precinct-acutely/">recently wrote an article for the upstart mag <em>The Enemy</em></a>, expounding on my thoughts about the relationships between teachers and the police, pulling together Mobb Deep, Frank Serpico, and others for a piece that was / is absolutely necessary. Here&#8217;s a glimpse:</p>
<blockquote><p>To the eyes of the American public, it might seem like none of these are connected, but, to many people of color, the school-to-prison pipeline has been lifted out of the underground and become part of the mainstream understanding of how this country works. When teachers continue to reinforce their allegiance with the darker elements of police brutality, we signal to disenfranchised communities that in fact, their lives don’t matter, from the time they step into the classroom to the time they’ve been pushed – not dropped – out.</p>
<p>As early as five years old, students of color start seeing a education of a different type than that of mainstream America. Suspensions of pre-K students of color get served at three times the rate of white pre-kindergarteners. These zero-tolerance policies are more prevalent in public and charter schools that are predominantly comprised of students of color, so a student getting arrested for wearing the wrong uniform or insubordination becomes commonplace for many of them. Police officers patrol schools in the name of keeping them safe, but, with metal detectors and cell-phone vans serving as the gatekeepers for these schools, does the heightened focus on safety keep students out of school as well?</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://theenemyreader.org/classroom-precinct-acutely/">To read more, click here.</a> Please share this article as well. I would love your feedback.</p>
<p><strong>Jose</strong></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/exclusive-classroom-precinct-accurately-enemy/">Exclusive: The Classroom and the Precinct, Accurately [The Enemy]</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/2Bb_wVqOh90" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/exclusive-classroom-precinct-accurately-enemy/feed/5http://thejosevilson.com/exclusive-classroom-precinct-accurately-enemy/Less Is More When It Comes To Teacher Time [Edutopia]Jose Vilson2015-01-29T17:45:11-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14420<p>My latest at Edutopia stems from a conversation I had with National Teacher of the Year Sean McComb and Maryland Teacher of the Year Jody Zepp last month at the Maryland State House for the Maryland State Education Association (MSEA). We talked about everything under the sun, but one of the things that made people shift in their chairs was my proclamation that we need to cut teacher time in ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/less-comes-teacher-time-edutopia/">Less Is More When It Comes To Teacher Time [Edutopia]</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/blog/value-of-a-teachers-time-jose-vilson">My latest at Edutopia stems</a> from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjsBgcizYYw">a conversation I had</a> with National Teacher of the Year Sean McComb and Maryland Teacher of the Year Jody Zepp last month at the Maryland State House for the Maryland State Education Association (MSEA). We talked about everything under the sun, but one of the things that made people shift in their chairs was my proclamation that we need to cut teacher time in half. Check the flow:</p>
<blockquote><p>However, in countries that have done away with those arguments, they&#8217;ve learned that teachers do much better by having <em>less</em> classes, <em>less</em> students, and <em>more</em> time for the mounds of paperwork they&#8217;re obligated to grade. McComb agreed as well, stating that, if we do the math based on the number of students he has compared to the time he gets in school to grade, he has about 20 seconds per student to grade their papers and give feedback. Of course, he would have to work at home and work extra (unpaid) time to finish his grading, but it seems wholly inefficient to make teachers do work at home when they could just get the time right there in school.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/blog/value-of-a-teachers-time-jose-vilson">Read more at Edutopia</a>. Like. Share. Let me know what you think. Thanks!</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/less-comes-teacher-time-edutopia/">Less Is More When It Comes To Teacher Time [Edutopia]</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/gp8IA19fdG4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/less-comes-teacher-time-edutopia/feed/2http://thejosevilson.com/less-comes-teacher-time-edutopia/For My Fellow Male Educators of ColorJose Vilson2015-01-27T17:58:47-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14415<p>My fellow men of color in the education sphere, Recently, there&#8217;s been lots of conversation around training and retaining more men of color to become K-12 teachers. Because there&#8217;s only 3% of us in the profession currently, seldom do I speak up and out against, or provide caveat to, elevating that number in the least. My experience is limited in that I haven&#8217;t met the 90,000 of us who stand ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/fellow-male-educators-color/">For My Fellow Male Educators of Color</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>My fellow men of color in the education sphere,</p>
<p>Recently, there&#8217;s been lots of conversation around training and retaining more men of color to become K-12 teachers. Because there&#8217;s only 3% of us in the profession currently, seldom do I speak up and out <em>against</em>, or provide caveat to<em>, </em>elevating that number in the least. My experience is limited in that I haven&#8217;t met the 90,000 of us who stand in front of our students, hopefully bringing them the knowledge and skills necessary to do well and find their own paths towards success. In this instance, I&#8217;ll also include the thousands of principals, administrators, consultants, and other professionals who roam our halls because, in many instances, these folks might be the only faces of color schools see throughout the year.</p>
<p>From my classroom purview, I&#8217;m often concerned with the reasons why we male educators of color come into education at all. Working conditions continue to be deplorable in the places we want to work the most. Environmental conditions make it difficult for our students to even get into our classrooms and pay attention, much less excel against immeasurable odds. Our own education programs don&#8217;t always prepare us for the challenges in front of us, and we&#8217;re sometimes held responsible for providing race professional development for colleagues and the discipline for <em>our</em> students. We&#8217;re pushed either into administration or dean roles, often under the guise of &#8220;you can do so much more for so many more.&#8221; Our administrators don&#8217;t always value our expertise in content as well as student relationships, and school districts have hired us at smaller rates than ever before. Higher ed professors, non-profit organizations, and media folks still organize TV shows and conferences about the education of children of color without ever talking to one of us, as if we can&#8217;t speak to our own professions, erasing us in the name of quasi-scholarship.</p>
<p>None of this excuses what I&#8217;ve seen as an endemic arrogance about the ways and means by which some of us approach education.</p>
<p>Many of us came into education as a means of passing knowledge forward, especially the knowledge that, yes, people of color <em>can</em> fight against a systematic assimilation and dulling of our collective intellect. With this common understanding, it&#8217;s concerning to me that so many of us forget our lineage when financial gain, opportunity, and spotlights get involved. Some of us too quickly embrace the narrative that our civil rights leaders did so as lone trees, and not as moving forests, branches interlocked towards a better tomorrow. Some of us see the power structure that has ostracized us from so long in education sub-spaces like ed-tech and activism and would replicate said structure only with you at the top, as if we&#8217;re here to create benevolent kings. Some of us think an occasional smile and the use of hip-hop lingo translates to true academic attainment, kicking back while our students learn nothing. Some of us use the same arguments about the parents of our children that have kept our schools at a distance from the parents we also serve.</p>
<p>Some of us would prefer the people who work in this vein to just leave the rest of us to our own devices. Our skinfolk and kinfolk need not be the same.</p>
<p>The whispers I always hear about me tend to focus on the use of an article before my name, as if my critiques limit opportunities of others. This comes with the assumption that my online and offline personae don&#8217;t speak to the experiences of students, teachers, and parents after almost a decade of dragging my fingertips on whiteboards, chalkboards, and keyboards. I <em>may</em> have had a part in moving the education sphere&#8217;s consciousness towards race issues. I <em>may</em> have promoted more men of color in my doings from New York City to the White House and across the country, and my pieces doing so around the world. I <em>may</em> have opened doors for like-minded tweeters of color to openly critique and transform the education profession. I <em>may</em> have made publishers more comfortable with letting writers of color talk about their experiences in education without feeling like they&#8217;re incapable of addressing a bleach-white, toilet-paper-soft niche. I <em>may</em> have needed the article &#8220;the&#8221; to do so.</p>
<p>I <em>do</em> still wake up at 5:30 every morning fully intent on teaching 90 students math at the 8:05 bell, because they still come first.</p>
<p>When we use the word &#8220;education&#8221; in our biographies to discuss our current profession, we signal to the world that they should entrust us with their children and futures for a given period of time. Our intentions and motives must work in that vein. As a unionist, I respect folks getting paid for their hard-earned labor, and I understand the need to hustle when most people who work in the service of children don&#8217;t get paid what they deserve. Yet, we do ourselves and everyone else a disservice when we put the ends before the means. When we say proudly that we can believe whatever we want, and kids don&#8217;t have to factor into the work we do as educators, we not only look disingenuous to every and all listeners, we erase centuries-long histories of remembrance and only help our institutions decimate our agency.</p>
<p>If I said anything in this letter that may be misconstrued as an attempt to stop recruiting men of color into education or to reduce the promotion of people of color to other prominent positions in the education sphere, I apologize. If this is used by well-meaning racists to perpetuate the firing of us individually and the schools we tend to work in, I apologize for that too. If this is used for post-racialists to make the case that white people can teach children of color just as well as white people can, or any convoluted argument I hadn&#8217;t actually argued in this letter, I apologize only to the extent of the reader&#8217;s literacy.</p>
<p>If this precise shoe fit, though, please wear it, though not as proudly as you do in online and offline spaces before this letter.</p>
<p>In the meantime, find this as a means to our collective liberation, not as a chastisement of one person or entity. Let us all remember that, no matter how much we fight against, those of us in the education space have dedicated ourselves to finding solutions, or, at least, give our students new problems for them to find. That&#8217;s what success in education looks like.</p>
<p><em>Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our classrooms and schools with all our children&#8217;s scintillating beauty.</em></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/fellow-male-educators-color/">For My Fellow Male Educators of Color</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/ACCqiJu9ygA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/fellow-male-educators-color/feed/5http://thejosevilson.com/fellow-male-educators-color/How Radical Is Your Martin Luther King Jr.?Jose Vilson2015-01-19T13:44:59-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14411<p>Back when I matriculated at Syracuse University, the Schine Student Center had a computer lab with a large whiteboard in the back of the basement used by student organizations, but the Black and Latino orgs would rapidly occupy that space. I&#8217;ll attribute it to feeling like we had few spaces where we could, at least, develop our publications and flyers while convening with other like-minded folks of color. In any ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/radical-martin-luther-king-jr/">How Radical Is Your Martin Luther King Jr.?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>Back when I matriculated at Syracuse University, the Schine Student Center had a computer lab with a large whiteboard in the back of the basement used by student organizations, but the Black and Latino orgs would rapidly occupy that space. I&#8217;ll attribute it to feeling like we had few spaces where we could, at least, develop our publications and flyers <em>while</em> convening with other like-minded folks of color. In any case, one day, I walked in to find that someone drew a long black line with &#8220;MLK Jr.&#8221; written in the middle. I didn&#8217;t know what to do with it, and many of my fellow students felt the need to put their names on the line to denote their radicalism. Of course, names like Clarence Thomas were written to the far right, so everyone wanted their names as far away from there as possible.</p>
<p>When I approached it, at first, I didn&#8217;t know what to make of it. Was I to understand that King Jr. was a middling activist, qualified enough to be the barometer for us all to judge our values, but not radical enough to pass the muster of the room&#8217;s collective, and perhaps redefined, blackness?</p>
<p>Yet, I found myself putting my name just to the left of Martin Luther King Jr., not as far as Malcolm X or Angela Davis, but a bit more anarchist than my perception of MLK Jr. Just then, a few members of Alpha Phi Alpha walked in and remarked, &#8220;Well, what&#8217;s the purpose of this chart?&#8221; Martin Luther King Jr. was himself a member of APhiA, so I didn&#8217;t know what to make of their objection.</p>
<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know &#8230;&#8221;, I said, hoping the person who put it up would jump in.<br />
&#8220;Well, if you don&#8217;t know, then why put your name up there?&#8221;, one APhiA said.<br />
&#8220;Not really sure, but this is supposed to represent where our political views lie.&#8221;<br />
&#8220;So then how does a line do that for us?&#8221;</p>
<p>These questions rattled my brain enough for me to take an eraser to the line and toss it in the air.</p>
<p>&#8220;Why did you erase it, though? It was such a good discussion piece!&#8221;</p>
<p>Twelve years later, and I&#8217;m still wrestling with this idea, but this time, with me as the provocateur. When David Coleman, now-president of the College Board and mind behind the Common Core State Standards, presented the CCSS plan to New York State in the spring of 2011, he introduced his divine plan for ELA with a mini-lesson on &#8220;Letters from a Birmingham Jail,&#8221; Martin Luther King Jr.&#8217;s indelible rejoinder to some of his harshest [white] critics. [<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTCiQVCpdQc">check a similar speech Coleman gave here</a>] When I first heard him use it, I couldn&#8217;t understand why he didn&#8217;t just stick to the Gettysburg Address, but then I realized that he needed to tie in MLK as a nod to the civil rights community to say, &#8220;This is for you, too!&#8221; as if the <a href="https://medium.com/teaching-learning/the-common-core-state-standards-and-the-code-to-equity-5eeb6e21e352">CCSS would take us on the path toward teaching for equity</a>.</p>
<p>Nowadays, everyone loves using MLK Jr. to make one point or another, akin to using Morgan Freeman to quotes he didn&#8217;t say, as if to add a moral gravitas that may or may not be there. It&#8217;s how I feel about quoting King overall. It feels less likely that one would quote Ella Baker, Malcolm X, or Marcus Garvey, but, when faced with a challenge regarding people of color, people too quickly jump on the lap of the prolific (and sanitized version of) MLK and find the most overarching quote possible to justify even the most obtuse arguments.</p>
<p>We don&#8217;t have to ignore the deep flaws in King&#8217;s life, and, as was made abundantly clear in my last post, <a href="http://thejosevilson.com/angela-davis-failures-leadership/">everyone will have their different perceptions of the heroes we hold dear</a>. Of course, that&#8217;s fine by me because there&#8217;s no such thing as a pure hero, but they do serve their purposes. King is one of the proverbial lions standing in front of our houses, guarding our visions for a better country to live in with hope and faith. Yet, his roar rang more globally, more fiercely as time went on. Peep this piece from his aforementioned letter from Birmingham:</p>
<blockquote><p>I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.</p></blockquote>
<p>Would David Coleman have read that far for his classroom? If so, how does he reconcile the civil rights faux-ra (portmanteau of faux and aura) with the multi-billion dollar industry that the CCSS has created right in front of us? If he&#8217;s going to present the letter as a text worth teaching, would he have the cultural responsiveness to deal with the reactions to this particular paragraph, or are the first three paragraphs universal and innocuous enough to get buy-in from all vested communities?</p>
<p>Conversely, how do any of us connect the work of those who came before with the work we&#8217;re doing now? Do you need King to serve the &#8220;good Negro&#8221; purpose for you or are you really <em>about that life</em>? This part especially goes to white allies, but applies to everyone as well: does MLK truly belong to everyone or does his standing as a Black man fighting for equality for people of color actually matter in the quotes we utter?</p>
<p>I&#8217;d say so.</p>
<p>Just because you&#8217;re in the coolest room in the house doesn&#8217;t mean the house isn&#8217;t, in fact, <a href="http://www.scu.edu/ethics/architects-of-peace/Belafonte/essay.html">burning around you</a>. For the rest of us in the house, we can&#8217;t rely on calling 911 for help. King, like so many others, was a firefighter, and our government put <em>him</em> out. Close read that.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/radical-martin-luther-king-jr/">How Radical Is Your Martin Luther King Jr.?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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